As a college student, it takes a lot to rattle my cage. With all the chaos (partying, drinking, vomiting) that is the college lifestyle, along with the media constantly feeding me their take on the most important issues and murders, I sometimes find myself numb to the sex and violence I see everyday. I have come to expect to see the local news swamped with top stories involving criminal activity. I don’t cringe when I hear of someone’s mother, sister and daughter being brutally raped or a family of six killed instantly in an automobile accident. It’s not that I don’t care, I’ve just become accustom to seeing too much of it. And there’s something wrong with that. I shouldn’t take the horrible parts of the world so lightly, but I do, we all do. There is so much going on, all the time, that if it doesn’t affect us, it doesn’t effect us. With that said, I read the Herald because it’s usually different. All aspects of the newspaper deal with what’s going on right here at Western, typically in an entertaining but tasteful way. Then again, choosing to place a picture of a person, male or female, in bra on the front page of a newspaper to shock people into reading a story is ludicrous. The story, whether you agree with its moral content, is well-written. But, I’m not one who opens the pages of the Herald to see pictures like this. There’s no need for it, but if the staff at the Herald finds it necessary to shock their readers to seize their interest, then fine. But, the Herald should remember that they are duplicating the same standards that other forms of modern media use to reel us in. As much as the Herald is respected in the journalism field, it doesn’t need to use these tactics. But, hey, who cares about respectable journalism anyways? Sex sells and if it bleeds, it leads – right?

Bennett Reynolds

796-8597

Louisville

Junior